


International Relations

by Syrena_of_the_lake



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26408053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake
Summary: All is not well at Winterfell University, but Susan Pevensie will be damned if she grants one more midterm paper extension. (Jon Snow, however, has seen the army of the damned, and came prepared.)
Relationships: Susan Pevensie/Jon Snow
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18
Collections: Narnia Fic Exchange 2020





	International Relations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snacky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snacky/gifts).



> For snacky, who has had a very rough week, and graciously granted all our NFE extensions anyway!

“My wife was kidnapped.” Susan read the email aloud, bemused.

Jon’s unruly mop of black hair poked out of his office. He swiveled, checked that no students were lurking nearby, and propelled his chair across the hall into Susan’s office and into her desk. She neatly snatched up her cup of tea before any could spill.

“Huh,” he said. “I didn’t know you had a wife.”

“I don’t. And I didn’t know you had such remarkable hearing,” commented Susan. “Or were you lurking in the doorway again, ready to make your escape as soon as office hours were over?”

Jon ignored her question and peered at Susan’s computer screen. Honestly, the man had no personal boundaries — it was as if he had been raised by wildlings, and not merely gone on sabbatical beyond the Wall.

“Do you think they’re really in trouble?” He frowned, and Susan made the disconcerting observation that, for all that Jon had uncertain parentage, it really was a Most Royal Frown. 

He couldn’t possibly be a Baratheon bastard...? No, the timing was all wrong. Besides, Baratheons may be on the throne (sort of; Susan had her suspicions), but most of the family went in for trades like smithing or shipbuilding. Not _college professor._

Make that _gullible college professor_. 

“You do know he’s just trying to get out of exams?” Susan asked, amused. 

“But how can you be sure? Maybe his wife was a Baratheon bastard, and Cersei had her abducted. Or killed.”

Susan’s eyebrows rose. “You’re almost as suspicious as my brother Edmund.”

Jon grinned. “And you’re almost as sneaky as a wildling.”

Susan rolled her chair closer. “Tell me, as one professor to another, is it true what they say about wildling bonding ceremonies?”

Jon’s eyebrows soared. “You’re not an anthropologist. You teach _politics_.” As always, he said the word with such revulsion that it made Susan smile.

“I teach _political science_ , and my interest in wildling bonding ceremonies is purely—”

“Prurient?”

“—personal.” Susan lowered her voice. “It sounds like a bacchanalia, and I wondered if anyone else might have made it out of Narnia and now lives beyond the wall.”

Jon’s face softened. “Why d’you think I went all that way, then?” he asked, just as quietly. “I would have sent a raven if I heard even the slightest whisper of Narnia. You know that.”

Susan closed her eyes and slumped back in her chair. “I know,” she said, suddenly exhausted.

Jon squeezed her shoulder. “And I know that you aren’t really sure whether your student’s wife’s kidnapping is a another ludicrous excuse or another crown plot, else you would have failed the poor boy and put him out of his misery already.”

Susan opened her mouth to protest and took a sip of tea instead. She made a face; it had gone cold. “Bloody northerners,” she muttered. “Why must you always be right?”

Jon shrugged, stood and slung his backpack over one shoulder. The hilt of his sword peeked out from the open flap.

“You really need a scabbard,” Susan pointed out. “Or one of these days some lightfingered student will steal it while looking for exam answers.”

“Naw, anthropologists aren’t so centered on grades. They’d think it was an artifact and donate it to a museum.” He offered Susan a knife from his boot. 

“Thank you, but no,” she sniffed. “Hand me my crossbow, it’s behind my umbrella.” 

Midterm exams would simply have to wait a little longer.

* * *

When they showed up at on-campus student housing, bearing arms and Most Royal Frowns, they were surprised to find the building empty.

“Maybe everyone’s been kidnapped,” said Jon.

“I am _not_ granting blanket paper extensions,” snapped Susan. “Not again.” She eyed the main door with mistrust, and opted to climb in through the lobby window instead.

“What was it last time?” Jon asked, nimbly following her lead. He had ditched the backpack and carried only the sword now, plus however many knives he had secreted about his person. (Now why did that thought make the back of her neck grow warm?) “Don’t tell me it was the death of the king.”

“Which one?” asked Susan, distracted. “I mean, there have been so many lately—”

“Kings or deaths?”

“Yes. Hence my policy of paper extensions only in case of personal, natural or national catastrophe — and not distress over deceased royals, unless one happens to be a blood relative.”

Jon made a face. “I suppose you’ve had a few of those, being in _politics_.”

“Political science,” she corrected absently. “Here, hold this.” She handed Jon her crossbow so she could pick the lock on the resident assistant’s room.

“Is this your student’s room?”

Susan scoffed. “As if I could keep track of which student rooms where, with the way they hop beds. No, this is the RA. She’ll have records.”

Susan made a noise of satisfaction when the lock clicked and the door swung open, and then nearly swallowed her tongue in surprise at the sight of all the bodies piled inside.

Jon proffered her crossbow. “Looks like you’ll be granting one of those extensions now.”

* * *

Midterm exams, Susan decided, could go hang.

She did not remember battles in Narnia fondly, but at least all the participants had been _alive_ while fighting. Fending off the Army of the Dead in Winterfell University’s Stark Science Hall was not the way she had wanted her Thursday to go.

On the other hand, it was hard not to enjoy Jon’s swordplay; he moved with uncommon grace. Plus, he had an excellent grasp of chemistry for an anthropologist. The fiery explosion in their wake may not burn down the Stark Science Hall, but it would keep their pursuers at bay for some time.

“We should go out like this more often!” Jon called as they ran. 

Susan spared him a withering look, but her wild grin probably spoiled the effect.

Clearly she had been cooped up inside grading papers far too long. 

They sprinted past the gymnasium, the auditorium, and the library (all named after various Starks), and then Susan grabbed Jon’s arm and dragged him to a halt. 

“What was it you said about museum artifacts?” asked Susan distantly.

“Susan, there’s _White Walkers_ on campus, we have to keep moving—”

Susan pointed at the poster on the library door, with its picture of ancient dragonglass daggers on display: RELICS FROM THE FIST OF THE FIRST MEN.

“Yes, but first we have to break into the museum,” she said.

* * *

“The Maester is going to kill us,” Jon hissed in her ear.

“Not if White Walkers kill us first,” Susan whispered back. 

There was no real reason for their hushed voices, except for sheer habit — they had each led dozens of field trips through the museum, exhorting hundreds of students to stop babbling about Jaime Lannister’s good looks and listen to the lecture on inter-house rivalry, Valerian steel forging, or wildling tribal dynamics. 

“Here,” said Jon. His voice rang loudly through the exhibit. Susan suppressed the urge to shush him. “Dragonglass. Spear, knife or arrows?”

“You need to ask?” Susan took the arrows eagerly and spared a moment to admire the finely carved heads before stripping and replacing the ancient fletching. The Maester would be horrified, if he was still alive, but Susan wanted her arrows to fly straight, thank you very much. Every White Walker she felled meant more time for more people to flee to safety.

“Susan.” Jon’s gentle hand on her arm stilled her rote motion. “I’m sorry about your students.”

She mustered a sad little smile. “And I’m sorry about yours. Maybe some of them got out in time.”

“If not, we’ll avenge them,” he vowed.

Susan swallowed the lump in her throat. Her mission had always been to protect, to make the last stand, to hold whatever line there was as long as she could, so others could escape. She had never sought vengeance before; but then again, after Narnia disappeared from the world, and her family along with it, there had been no one to exact vengeance upon. Merely a hole in the map and her heart.

She had tried so hard not to let anyone fill it.

“Are you with me?” asked Jon.

Susan’s heart cracked, just a little. _Always_ , she wanted to say, but both of them knew better than to make promises they couldn’t keep. “I’m with you,” she said instead. And, with the Stark Science Hall still burning behind them and White Walkers and their dread, dead army advancing from all sides, there was still somehow no place she would rather be. 

* * *

When it was all over, Susan beheld the shambles of what used to be her office building and sighed. 

“Midterms extended?” asked Jon, draping an arm around her shoulders.

Susan leaned into him gratefully. “Canceled,” she sighed bleakly. “At least until we know who all survived. Reanimated corpses can’t sit exams.”

Anyone else would have looked at her askance, but Jon was well accustomed to black humor. Susan would do her mourning later, when the work was done, just as she always had.

“Where do we start, Jon?” Susan was so very tired. Her world had already ended once. Now apocalypse threatened the Seven Kingdoms. Winter was coming. What if nothing could stop it?

“With a field trip,” said Jon, and Susan was so surprised at this seismic shift in his priorities that she twisted out from under his arm. “To the Fist of the First Men,” he clarified, “to dig for dragonglass. Enough to arm an army.”

That gave Susan an idea. “You lead the dig,” she said. “I’ll handle the politics.”

“You’re worried about politics _now_?”

“Tell me, Jon, what makes dragonglass?”

He looked at her strangely. “I’m not a geologist, but—”

“Dragons,” said Susan simply. “I’d say it’s time to make overtures to the Dragon Queen.”

Jon’s look of admiration warmed her to her toes. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I have plans for tonight, and they don’t involve political science, anthropology, archeology, geology or any other -ology.”

“I don’t know,” murmured Susan, drawing him close once more. “An exam could be fun. I’ll give you extra credit for exceptional effort.”

“I haven’t studied.” Jon’s calloused fingers brushed the line of her cheekbones, traced the curve of her lips, skimmed down her neck.

Susan tried to find the perfect comeback — something about cramming or remedial tutoring — but it was hard to concentrate. Finally, when they stumbled into Jon’s miraculously intact apartment (rather spartan, except for an inexplicable but luxurious fur rug), she found the right words with her last shreds of coherent thought.

“I’ll grant you an extension.”


End file.
